In Groupe Acquires Passport Security Specialist SURYS

France’s IN Groupe has completed its acquisition of the optical security specialist SURYS. SURYS is best known as a provider of security components for passports (half of the world’s passports currently feature SURYS tech) and other sensitive documents.

The IN Groupe, meanwhile, is wholly owned by the French state, and hopes to use SURYS’s expertise to bolster a secure components portfolio that already includes SPS, an IN Groupe subsidiary that focuses on electronic components for chip cards. SURYS will be expected to collaborate with SPS to create a new components center.

The broader goal is to develop solutions for a range of different identity documents, and to make France a leader in banking and financial security. To that end, SURYS tech has already appeared in passports from France, China, and Brazil, in addition to bank notes from the Philippines.

Earlier this year, the IN Groupe played a key role in a Eurotunnel deal that brought biometric PARAFE e-Gates to the Channel Tunnel border between France and the UK. More recently, the Dutch SURYS subsidiary Keesing Technologies released a new web API to help financial institutions with mobile onboarding. SURYS has access to the world’s largest identity document database thanks to its arrangement with Keesing.

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December 11, 2019 – by Eric Weiss